


celestial bodies

by Noa



Category: Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates
Genre: Bittersweet, Canon Compliant, Friendship, Gen, Personal Growth, Platonic Romance, Relationship Study, Requested fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-25
Updated: 2016-04-25
Packaged: 2018-06-04 11:19:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6655816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Noa/pseuds/Noa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It becomes impossible for Leo to remember what it was like in the dark.</p>
            </blockquote>





	celestial bodies

The moon is missing.

Leo stares outside his chamber’s window, peering into a seemingly endless night. A book lies open in his lap, and Leo treats it like a friend. From the quiet wells up sound, shouts, steel boots on  marble and panic through the halls. Leo looks at the door, and waits for it to die.

It doesn’t.

So he sets his book aside, shakes off his woolen blanket, and sets out to return the night to silence. Now it’s his steel boots that clink, his shouts weaving spells, until a man falls at his feet, and begs to meet his blade. Then, everything goes quiet. Leo looks to the floor, and sees the moon, dressed as an Outlaw abandoned by the Gods.

His name is Niles.

Leo picks him up, brushes moon dust from his ragged edges, and gives him a darkness to illuminate. Niles takes his place at Leo’s side, and the prince no longer treats his books as friends.

The moon is young.

Things are changing in Leo’s life. He doesn’t see his father as much as he used to, and when he does, the smile he grew up with is gone. The army is growing, preparing for something, but Leo doesn’t know what. It keeps him up at night, restless and afraid of the gaps in his knowledge, the shortcomings of his mind.

Niles takes him outside, pulls him by the hand through freshly cut grass that glows blue with the soft shine of a moon gathering its strength. They sit in this grass, lean back on their hands, and look up. Leo breathes in, breathes out, and all his worries and insecurities scatter until they are irrelevant, until they are just more stars dotting a vast and boundless night. Among them all, there is Niles, taming the wild tides of Leo’s thoughts, inspiring him to see fragments of himself that had never before come to light.

Leo thinks of how much nicer it is to watch the moon with a person, instead of a book.

The moon is halfway there.

Niles trains, catches up on a life of education and instruction that he missed as a child, all to better serve his lord, his kingdom. Leo rediscovers loneliness in days without a purpose, accomplishments without recognition, in a quiet, still heart, with no books left to save him from his dread for inadequacy.

And as sudden as a shooting star, someone new crashed into his world, broke the balance of Leo’s perfectly arranged night sky.

His name is Odin.

He is loud and different, he fights like picture books come to life, and even his sad face smiles. Leo reels, tired of competing, unwilling to be pushed into shadows by this stranger, this burning, unexplained ball of power. So he sets out to destroy this meteor before it destroys him.

The moon is waxing.

And no matter what Leo hurls at his newest retainer, they turn it into fuel, and come back burning brighter. Odin is no longer just a shooting star. He is a sun. Intense, suffocating, and Leo has no shelter, no manner of defense. So he surrenders himself to the heat, and prepares to waste away.

But the sun does not burn him. It dances gently across his skin, drenches his bones with warmth, and lights up everything he touches. It takes Leo a while to see, but even Niles shines brighter when Odin is around. They complement each other, in whatever illogical way suits them, and through that connection, they grow closer to Leo as well.

So when Odin thinks out loud one night, and wonders why his liege suddenly warmed up to him like the coming of Summer, Niles smiles, and says it was Odin who warmed up Leo, first. Odin doesn’t understand, but he stays radiant all the same, and both Niles and Leo find comfort within the reach of his light.

The moon is full.

They all have blood on their hands. They are all street urchins, all royals, all everything in between. They build their bond on bodies of their enemies, on stories around a campfire, on long nights of patrolling, and afternoons wasted away in nothing but each other’s company.

They touch, back to back in tough fights, palm to palm in the aftermath. Shoulders supporting limping bodies, battle-rough hands bandaging wounds. Tired voices waking each other up when it’s time to switch guard. There is no liege, no retainer.

There’s Leo, Niles and Odin.

And odd a match as they may seem, something about them just _works_. Something renders them from a bunch of insecure misfits to a mix of silver and gold fit to build the sky. They are the sun, the moon, and all of the stars.

It becomes impossible for Leo to remember what it was like in the dark.

The moon is waning.

Betrayal lies lurking in every unseen corner. Leo is on guard, all thorns, while Niles and Odin do their best to keep him safe. Some nights, they hear their liege cry, sobbing in his sleep, for siblings, and sickness, and death. They do their best to outshine Leo’s foreshadowing, but they too can feel the ominous presence of madness, the desperation that’s left when a hunt for power ends.

Some mornings, Leo wakes up embraced by sun and moon alike, cheeks salty from shed tears, and his throat sore. Then, he takes Niles’s hand in one, Odin’s in the other. He brings them together at his chest, closes his eyes, and lets himself sink back into sleep knowing that there is no crisis he will have to face alone.

The moon is halfway gone.

They are winning the war, in a way. Historians will say that the victory belonged to Nohr, ages from now, missing all the losses they suffered, all the sacrifices made. Leo tries not to think about it.

Odin seems more distant, lately. There isn’t an order he won’t follow, not an embrace he misses, but he just isn’t.. _there_. It’s like he lives in two worlds, and Niles pretends not to care, but Leo sees the way he sits a bit closer to Odin, sees the way he endures Odin’s monologues just a bit longer- As if Niles expects Odin to vanish at any second.

Leo trusts Odin. He knows Odin won’t turn on him, so why should he fear his disappearance? He doesn’t know, and he’s sure Niles doesn’t know either. But the fear stays, dripping like the first few raindrops of a storm, and all their eyes are on the sky, waiting for lightning to strike them blind, drinking in as much as they can before it all gets taken away.

The moon is old.

Odin asks what Leo would do if he were to, one day, be gone from his side. Leo’s stomach lurches, and his throat goes dry. With a forced smile, Leo tells Odin that there isn’t anything he’d trade him for. Not now, not ever. There is room for only one sun in his sky, and should that sun burn out, Leo will embrace the darkness it leaves behind.

Odin seems relieved and disappointed at the same time. He asks Niles the same question, and receives a threat. Niles says he will kill him before Odin can even think of abandoning them -he promises- but the malice in his voice mellows when he reads Odin’s eyes, and sees that this is different. Difficult, and unavoidable.

They stop trying to understand something they can’t, and agree that it doesn’t matter where Odin goes. Their lives together can’t be unlived. He will never leave their sides.

Then, they cry. All three of them, the droplets from before pouring into a full-blown rain, and it’s cleansing somehow. Powerful. It cements their bond even further, and in that certainty, they find peace.

(So does the world.)

Odin stays long enough to celebrate.

They run outside in the middle of the night, pile onto each other, barely fitting under Leo’s single woolen blanket. They joke, and laugh, touch shoulders and hold hands, eyes on the stars, and stars in their eyes.

When Leo and Niles wake up in the morning, Odin is gone.

The moon is dark.

The sun burns in their hearts. And the night is empty, but they are complete.

_-fin_

**Author's Note:**

> (Currently catching up on requests, so I won't take new ones for a while.)


End file.
